Monitoring of outcomes

Monitoring is primarily used to help avoid repeated mistakes and to enable an adaptive approach to management. This is especially important where local conditions of the site may not have been extensively researched as is the case in our project and common with community-led initiatives. Trial and error can be a practical way to design and manage a project in these situations and regular monitoring is essential to identify undesirable trends sooner rather than later. We have applied monitoring at several scales. We have used targeted monitoring at the small trail scale for example to trial different foredune restoration methods before scaling up. At the whole-site scale monitoring has been very useful to show the level of success against long term objectives, which in turn has helped build support for the project as well as helping management planning going forward. Examples include measuring plant growth, mortality and dune profile changes over time along with records of the inputs required to achieve various results. We also monitor the human dimension, such as the experiences of participants in the project and perspectives on priorities for management.

  1. Developing and trialling new monitoring techniques, especially for methods that are suitable for a wide range of end-users (eg. in community sector) or where a range of methods is developed to suit different end-users.
  2. Production of guidance materials to help lay people and community groups design and implement robust monitoring programmes. This is especially important within context of monitoring for community-based projects.
  3. Funding for monitoring programmes and analysis/communication of the results.

We have found that monitoring and the feedback of information to those involved can useful as a motivational factor. The information also has practical utility for securing buy-in from key authorities or sponsors for funding. Recently we have extended monitoring to the human dimension to gauge aspects of the project that are of interest to the participants. This is proving useful with project design and planning. Selection of appropriate metrics for monitoring remains a key concern. Ideally these are not just of academic interest and will represent tangibles sought by stakeholders. To address this we coupled the design of monitoring activities with stakeholder perception surveys to establish key values to monitor from various perspectives. In this way we are using monitoring to help gauge the success of management in terms of stakeholder needs. Although it is not possible to monitor everything of potential interest this is helping to get the best value from monitoring efforts.